How can I italicize Greek characters in Grapher?

The ability to italicize characters is controlled by the font. Some fonts (such as Symbol) do not have the italicize ability built into them. Programs like Word will often do some internal italicizing when using these fonts, but it is not correct to do so. To show Greek characters italicized, you need to use a font that supports italics. So, for Greek letters, you could use the Arial font. There are three methods that can be used to insert these characters into your text boxes in Grapher: using the insert symbol command, copying from the Windows character map, or using Windows ALT codes. Please see below for instructions on using all three methods.

Insert Symbol Command:

In the Text Editor, click the Insert Symbol button ().

Change the Symbol Set to the desired font, such as Arial.

Scroll to the desired letter and click it. Click OK and the character is inserted.

Highlight the character and click the italic option. The character will be italicized.

Copying from Windows Character Map:

Click the Windows Start button.

In the Search programs and files box, type charmap and press ENTER.

The Character Map opens.

Set the Font to the desired font, such as Arial.

Scroll through the characters until the desired letter is found. Click on the letter to select it.

Click the Select and Copy button.

Switch to Grapher and open the Text Editor.

Press CTRL+V to paste the character into the Text Editor.

Highlight the character and click the italic option. The character will be italicized.

Inserting ALT codes:

In the Text Editor, press and hold the ALT key.

On the numeric keypad, type the code for the specific letter. Please see this website for information on which number goes with which character. For instance, to get the lowercase alpha character, press ALT+224. The character appears.

Highlight the character and click the italic option. The character will be italicized.